Page:Jack Heaton, Wireless Operator (Collins, 1919).djvu/238

 they ever touched the water. In less than a minute the torpedo struck the hull amidships, passed through it to the inside and exploded with a terrific report.

It looked to me as if the whole ship was thrown bodily out of the water by the sheer force of the explosion and then parted in her middle. As she settled down on the water a great black cloud of smoke poured out of her hold and when the air struck her she caught fire and was soon a solid, seething sheet of flame. It was the most magnificent spectacle I have ever seen from longitude 0 to 70 degrees west of Greenwich and from the Equator to the Pole.

Different from the German idea of kultur, instead of letting the crew of the Koln drown, the Captain of the Henrietta sent out boats and stood by until all of them were picked up and on board his ship.

We then sailed back to our naval base where the German crew was taken off and interned in a concentration camp until the war ended. Their fighting days were over while on the other hand mine had just commenced.